Is any of it true? If so, how true? Ken Jennings wants to find out if mother and father always know best. Yes, all those years you were told not to sit too close to the television (you’ll hurt your eyes!) or swallow your gum (it stays in your stomach for seven years!) or crack your knuckles (arthritis!) are called into question by our country’s leading trivia guru. Jennings separates myth from fact to debunk a wide variety of parental edicts: no swimming after meals, sit up straight, don’t talk to strangers, and so on.

Armed with medical case histories, scientific findings, and even the occasional experiment on himself (or his kids), Jennings exposes countless examples of parental wisdom run amok. Whether you’re a parent who wants to know what you can stop worrying about or a kid (of any age) looking to say, “I told you so,” this is the anti–helicopter parenting book you’ve been waiting for.

Ken Jennings broke game show records in 2004 with his unprecedented seventy-four game, $2.52 million victory streak on Jeopardy!. Jennings’s book Brainiac, about his Jeopardy! adventures, was a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, as was his follow-up, Maphead. He is also the author of Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac. Jennings lives in Washington with his wife Mindy, his son Dylan and daughter Caitlin, and a deeply unstable Labrador retriever named Banjo.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Because I Said So!

Kirkus Reviews

It’s never too early to instill correct musical taste in your kids.” Readers will learn, if they haven’t guessed already, that you don’t need to wait an hour after eating before swimming, that masturbation will not result in hairy palms, that sitting too close to the TV isn’t all that bad for you...

All-time Jeopardy champion Jennings (Maphead; Brainiac) tackles the veracity of old wives' tales that will likely be familiar to most listeners: feed a cold and starve a fever; sitting too close to the TV will ruin your eyes; if you cross your eyes,